Car Industry "Buried Report Showing US Car Safety Flaws Over Fears For TTIP Deal"

schwit1 writes: The American auto industry has been accused of withholding a report that showed U.S. cars are substantially less safe than their European counterparts. It is alleged that releasing the study would hamper the drive to harmonize safety standards as part of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal. The research was commissioned by the car industry to show that EU and US safety standards were similar, but the research actually showed that American models are much less safe when it comes to front-side collisions. András Bálint, Traffic Safety Analyst at Chalmers, told the Independent: “The results of our study indicate that there is currently a risk difference with respect to the risk of injury given a crash between EU specification cars and US models. Therefore, based on these results, immediate recognition of US vehicles in the EU could potentially result in a greater number of fatalities or serious injuries in road traffic. The potential impact is difficult to quantify because it depends on a number of other parameters.”

Comments

Well, that was quick

[muecksteiner]

Retaliation for the whole emissions standard thing.

Not that either is ok: neither should VW have cheated, nor the U.S. automakers ever have been so lax w/r to crash safety.

Re:Well, that was quick

[Grishnakh]

You're an idiot, and the fact you're been modded "insightful" for what the other responder rightfully calls "Redneck Engineering" is proof that Slashdot is not "news for nerds" any more.

Airbags, brakes, and complex suspension doesn't add a large amount of mass to a car (longer crumple zones and sturdier roll cages do though). Modern, more complex suspensions are actually lighter than the shitty old live-axle suspensions vehicles used to have, and have much lower unsprung mass, but the reason they're used is to improve handling, not to make the car more crashworthy (though this does help avoid crashes). Better brakes do add more unsprung mass but again help avoid crashes.

Americans do spend more time in their cars, and accordingly, you'd think they'd want cars that allow them to survive crashes better. There's no conflict between comfort and crashworthiness; after all, Americans have no problem buying giant, gas-guzzling SUVs which certainly have a mass advantage. The engineering conflict with crashworthiness is with fuel economy, as extra mass works directly against that. However, European cars are obviously safer, even though fuel economy is a much bigger concern in Europe due to higher gas prices as well as higher taxes on vehicles with larger engines. But despite those factors, the Europeans seem to do a much better job engineering cars for crashes than Americans.

Re:Well, that was quick

[Grishnakh]

Actually, you're wrong about cars being lighter. Cars 40 (really more like 45: 40 years ago was just after the OPEC crisis when suddenly Honda Civics became all the rage) years ago were about the same weight as cars now--roughly 3000 pounds. Google it. Cars back then had somewhat heavier body panels and frames, but a lot less other stuff: interior parts, safety equipment, air conditioning, power steering, etc. Cars probably reached a minimum weight in the late 70s and 80s, and have been climbing back up in weight since then, though they've probably gone back down a bit in recent years thanks to higher use of aluminum and high-strength steels.

Re:Hmmmm

[TWX]

I wouldn't worry at all. IIHS procedures are very cut and dry. They do 40% overlap and 20% overlap tests. The 20% had results all over the damn place from cars form all makers. If I remember right, Toyota fared the worst in that crash mode.

I actually like the IIHS. Their goal is to reduce the costs of insurance payments. That means they look at both the low-speed and the high-speed modes, low speed to minimize crash damage, and the high-speed to minimize passenger injuries. They're not beholden to the automakers and they're not government, so they can develop new tests whenever they want and the results of those tests push manufacturers to make their cars safer to try to avoid bad press.

It's one of the few instances where the private sector 'regulation' works better than public sector.

Re:American vs. European 'safety'

[Midnight Thunder]

I thought the same thing, but in TFA:

Of particular concern to safety groups is the finding that passengers in a typical EU model are 33 per cent safer in front-side collisions, an accident that often results in serious injury, than those in a typical US model.

I suspect there is a bias towards driver safety in the US standards, since cars tend to have a single occupant.

This is part of the problem with the TTIP and other 'negotiated in secret' trade agreements. Populations in different cultures and populations have different priories for them, so a government is penalised for trying to be stricter on companies, than in another geography, there is a problem. The TTIP just encourages the lowest common dimonator to rule the board, since that is going to make it easier on corporations, rather than protecting the interests of citizens in a given location.

The only winners for TTIP and the sister trade agreements are US centric multinationals, at least from what I have read.

Re:Details

[Bremen24601]

It would cut both ways, as European cars probably don't meet US standards either.

The problem is safety is not a single variable. Improving one measure of safety might decrease another. EU and US regulators simply have different concerns about what is safe. EU regulators are concerned about pedestrian collisions, but making a car safer for pedestrians might make for worse accidents when you run into a Hummer.

There are other factors too, like US regulators test for what happens when people don't wear seatbelts, in the EU they just assume people do (because oddly Europeans actually use the things).

Re:American vs. European 'sanity'

[dierdorf]

The reason why riding a motorcycle without a helmet is a good idea is that, when you die in a crash, only your head is destroyed and all your body organs are probably available for transplants. OTOH, if you die in an automobile crash while not wearing a seatbelt, then you have probably messed up your internal organs and have lost your chance to do SOMETHING for society. Therefore, seatbelts are mandatory while helmets are not.